Quantum computers are coming. And when they arrive, they are going to upend the way we protect sensitive data. Unlike classical computers, quantum computers harness quantum mechanical effects — like ...

If you’ve been making the same commute for a long time, you’ve probably settled on what seems like the best route. But “best” is a slippery concept. Perhaps one day there’s an accident or road closure ...

In life, we sometimes have to make decisions without all the information we want; that’s true in computer science, too. This is the realm of online algorithms — which, despite their name, don’t ...

From powering search engines to securing data and optimizing networks, algorithms underpin nearly every aspect of modern technology. Understanding how efficiently they can solve problems — and where ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

Imagine a world where artificial intelligence not only understands language but creates with it, where quantum systems no longer feel like an enigma but a solvable puzzle. It might sound like science ...

Although quantum computing is a nascent field, there are plenty of key moments that defined it over the last few decades as scientists strive to create machines that can solve impossible problems.

Sachdeva’s breakthrough challenges one of the most studied problems in computer science, known as maximum flow, which ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. All of modern mathematics is built on the foundation of set theory, the study of how to organize abstract collections of objects. But in ...